My glasses story I had my first eye test when I was 8 years old shortly before the summer holidays where I was told I needed glasses. We didn’t know I was short sighted until a teacher pointed out that my poor performance at school in relation to my brothers may be down to issues with my vision which proved correct. It was an understatement to say I really wasn’t happy about the thought of wearing glasses. At first I did everything I could to avoid wearing them until I spent the long summer school holiday wearing them 24/7 under my mum’s supervision. By the time school came around I was so used to them when I took them off everything was too blurry so I had to become a reluctant full time wearer in spite of my feelings about them. The teasing and name calling that came my way in school was hard to deal with me being shy and sensitive. I was very thin and I am very fair so my big black NHS glasses really stood out and made me a bit of a target for the bullies. Once I started wearing glasses fulltime my eyes got worse quite quickly and I needed 3 new pairs between 8yo and 11yo before I got to secondary school, shortly after around 12/13yo my prescription took a big jump and my lenses had become noticeably thick. Back then they could only offer you one type of lenses, not like today where you can get super thin lenses, this is the progression of myopia all very short sighted people go through and you can see they are getting worse as the lenses get thicker. my myopia didn’t settle until I had finished college at 20yo. I stuck with NHS style glasses frames until then. I hated the when I first got them but had become used to the way I looked in them, back then I could not see what new frames looked like when trying them on. Now technology has changed all that. My current pair was selected using the aid of smart phone camera. Polo Ralph Lauren PH 2117 547 in black, always black. My two spare pairs I bought online, nothing wrong with the quality of the frames and lenses or accuracy of the prescription but a fifth of the price. These days I have an expensive pair with thin lenses and two pairs for spares with myodisc lenses which are made that way to keep the cost down. Even so the regular pair have noticeably thick lenses at the edges, from the front the extent of the cut in and the amount of power rings gives away the high power of my prescription. I have only tried contact lenses once about 12 years ago when Specsavers were doing a free trail. I wore them twice, way too fiddley and I just didn’t look right wearing them, too used to seeing my self in glasses I suppose. At this point I will list a few of the negative things that have come about because of my poor eyesight and wearing very strong glasses. I can’t drive as my VA is too poor. I never get AR coating on my lenses because it makes them harder to keep clean. New glasses are very expensive. They fog up when it’s least convenient, mask wearing was a pain. They also become useless in heavy rain, I nearly got run over the other day because I couldn’t see where I was going. My thick/strong lenses tend to attract unwanted attention, curiosity or comments. I was once asked if I had Down’s Syndrome because of my thick glasses, I kid you not. They distort my vision, especially at the edge of the lens with my strong prescription. They have had an effect on my self esteem and confidence. They prevented me from getting involved in a lot of sports, I never learnt to swim or ride a bike. Pet hate on the subject of glasses, people who wear glasses without prescription purely for fashion. I have seen many sports, TV and film stars and bloggers and tik tokers doing it. Well that’s it for now.